Anna Karenina - Part 5

In death, of which they talked to him so often, Seryozha

disbelieved entirely. He did not believe that those he loved

could die, above all that he himself would die. That was to him

something utterly inconceivable and impossible. But he had been

told that all men die; he had asked people, indeed, whom he

trusted, and they too, had confirmed it; his old nurse, too, said

the same, though reluctantly. But Enoch had not died, and so it

followed that everyone did not die. "And why cannot anyone else

so serve God and be taken alive to heaven?" thought Seryozha.

Bad people, that is those Seryozha did not like, they might die,

but the good might all be like Enoch.

"Well, what are the names of the patriarchs?"

"Enoch, Enos--"

"But you have said that already. This is bad, Seryozha, very

bad. If you don't try to learn what is more necessary than

anything for a Christian," said his father, getting up, "whatever

can interest you? I am displeased with you, and Piotr Ignatitch"

(this was the most important of his teachers) "is displeased with

you.... I shall have to punish you."

His father and his teacher were both displeased with Seryozha,

and he certainly did learn his lessons very badly. But still it

could not be said he was a stupid boy. On the contrary, he was

far cleverer than the boys his teacher held up as examples to

Seryozha. In his father's opinion, he did not want to learn what

he was taught. In reality he could not learn that. He could

not, because the claims of his own soul were more binding on him

than those claims his father and his teacher made upon him.

Those claims were in opposition, and he was in direct conflict

with his education. He was nine years old; he was a child; but

he knew his own soul, it was precious to him, he guarded it as

the eyelid guards the eye, and without the key of love he let no

one into his soul. His teachers complained that he would not

learn, while his soul was brimming over with thirst for

knowledge. And he learned from Kapitonitch, from his nurse, from

Nadinka, from Vassily Lukitch, but not from his teachers. The

spring his father and his teachers reckoned upon to turn their

mill-wheels had long dried up at the source, but its waters did

their work in another channel.

His father punished Seryozha by not letting him go to see

Nadinka, Lidia Ivanovna's niece; but this punishment turned out

happily for Seryozha. Vassily Lukitch was in a good humor, and

showed him how to make windmills. The whole evening passed over

this work and in dreaming how to make a windmill on which he

could turn himself--clutching at the sails or tying himself on

and whirling round. Of his mother Seryozha did not think all the

evening, but when he had gone to bed, he suddenly remembered her,

and prayed in his own words that his mother tomorrow for his

birthday might leave off hiding herself and come to him.